


show me a hero (and i'll write you a tragedy)

by thimble



Category: Big Hero 6 (2014)
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-06
Updated: 2017-09-06
Packaged: 2018-12-24 13:13:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12013494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thimble/pseuds/thimble
Summary: You think Tadashi, wherever he is in an afterlife you don't believe in, would be disappointed.But Tadashi isn't here, is he?





	show me a hero (and i'll write you a tragedy)

"You gotta hurry if you want to catch that bot fight."

Tadashi's voice is a playful note in the air, whizzing past your ear and over your head. You could catch it, you really could, throw it back with the jab already on the tip of your tongue, except Callaghan's parting words are still echoing like a glitchy audio track, a taunt on autopilot. You're fourteen, you weren't born yesterday; they're baiting you and you're excruciatingly aware it's working.

Moments like these you wish you were the type to care about saving face, but opportunity is way more interesting than dignity. If someone had held up a mirror in front of you while you poked around the labs, you're pretty sure you'd see light bulbs stuck on your sockets instead of eyes. Everyone who's ever met into you has gotta know you never, ever go for easy.

"How do I get in?" doesn't sound like anything but defeat. Tadashi smiles, so warmly they'd have to invent another thermodynamic law for it, like he's proud of you anyway.

 

* * *

 

Your fingers snag on his sleeve before he's even surged forward, up those steps and through those doors, the insides of which are hot, too hot, like it could singe your hair for standing too close.

Makes sense because it's on fire. Makes less sense that he's looking at you like you're the unreasonable one, when neither logic nor love can make him stay where he is.

"Someone has to help."

Your weak grip is not enough to keep him and all you have left is his musty old cap on the ground. This strikes you as wrong -- he's always wearing that thing, you've joked that it's why he hasn't scored a date in a decade -- so you try to follow him, give him part of his superhero costume back (what's Batman without his Batcape?) when the sun explodes and you're kissing concrete from the force of its collapse.

No, no, that's impossible, the sun is a hundred fifty million kilometers away and bigger, way bigger, and it's not supposed to turn into a red giant for another five billion years but how else can you explain that boom this heat the blinding yellow your bonehead of a brother had rushed into fifteen seconds ago?

"Tadashi!" His name rips itself out of your throat as you will your feet to run towards him, hoping you're as loud as the oncoming sirens. "Tadashi!"

You gotta hurry, if you ever want to see him again.

 

* * *

 

You'll never see Tadashi again, and the reason is right in front of you.

Unmasked, Callaghan somehow looks more menacing, like a man capable of monstrous acts instead of a monster itself. There is an anger in his eyes that you, for a split second, understand.

But you might be imagining it. You're probably mistaking it for your own.

First, disbelief. They say grief is a cyclical thing, and just when you thought you'd been through all the stages it flares to life again, your heart a rusted engine gearing up to be broken.

"Tadashi." You hate how it rolls off your tongue, a stuttering sound that isn't at all related to your nervousness in front of a crowd. It reminds you of the day you showed your nanobots to the world, of the night that Tadashi -- "You just let him die."

Callaghan's only response is an outstretched hand, and this time it isn't an invitation. All he wants is the mask, and frustration makes your fingers grip it tighter, to the point of shattering if only you were stronger.

"He went in there to save you." Your voice is pinched, pathetic, primed for tears. Everyone always said you were smarter than you should be, and in this moment you feel your age catch up to you with all its naive, trusting glory.

This is Tadashi's legacy, the last thing you remember of him. He couldn't, shouldn't have died in vain.

Except Callaghan is right there, telling you in simple terms that he did.

"That was his mistake."

Epinephine surges through your brain as your serotonin levels go down. Logically, you classify this emotion as rage. Logically, you know that killing, even killing for revenge, is both lawfully and morally wrong.

You're a scientist, pragmatic to a fault, and since you have no use for it at the moment, you throw logic out the metaphorical window.

The words leave your mouth and you can't pretend you don't mean them. "Baymax, destroy."

"My programming prevents me from injuring a human being."

"Not anymore."

It's the chip -- Tadashi's chip -- that's standing between you and the justice you want so desperately to serve. It's wrong that Callaghan is alive while Tadashi is not. All you're going to do is fix the facts.

You yank the chip out of the Baymax's port, turning him completely into a fighting machine. You think Tadashi, wherever he is in an afterlife you don't believe in, would be disappointed.

But Tadashi isn't here, is he?

 

* * *

 

Your first battle is a hard one, and hard won, but with your team and a little ingenuity you somehow save Krei, save the city, save Callaghan's daughter, and even Callaghan himself. A job well done, and it's all over the news, splashed across front pages and dominating overheard conversations.

It's all over.

And so starts the rest of your life.

Your acceptance to the so-called nerd school is still valid, and you set your own record-breaking pace as its youngest student, soon to be its youngest graduate. The classes are challenging, though nothing you can't handle. Your biggest hurdle has always been yourself.

("Look for a new angle!" echoes in your mind, like sonar helping you find your way home.)

They give you Tadashi's old lab, with its high ceilings and the picturesque view.

They give you Tadashi's old lab and you spend your first all-nighter moving in your things, yours and his, and it almost feels like having him there with you.

Baymax's arm gets its own special perch, and then one day, on a whim, when nostalgia visits you like an errant dream, you bump your knuckles against it and it opens to reveal the chip -- Tadashi's chip -- contained in his palm.

Carbon dioxide exits your lips and you almost forget to invite oxygen in.

It takes forever to rebuild him, in your best efforts to replicate the original design. It takes forever to get the right parts and put him back together, like a cracked eggshell from a fallen wall. And it takes no time at all, because soon enough Baymax is here, as if you never lost him, as if he never left.

"Ow," you say, and you watch as he flares to life like a new engine.

("On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your pain?"

"Zero," is not entirely the truth, because it still hurts to remember that your big brother only exists in photographs and memories, in messy notes and toolkits and lines of code, in fragments of the smile that looks back at you in the mirror.

But you're going to be okay, and the reason is right in front of you.)


End file.
